A Donegal man who has managed to live for the past year without spending any money is to use the proceeds from a book about his experience to set up a community of like-minded individuals.
Mark Boyle, 30, originally from Ballyshannon, now lives in a caravan in Bristol in south-west England. He hopes to buy 60 acres within a 30-mile radius of Bristol where he will set up a "freeconomy" community with Fergus Drennan, a professional forager who presented a BBC show on his lifestyle. The site could accommodate 15 to 20 people living off the land and not partaking in paid work.
Boyle expects the proceeds from his book to cover a third of the purchase price and is in talks with the BBC to present a show on free living to cover a further portion of the cost.
"I've been inundated with requests [to be part of the community]. Forty or fifty people have e-mailed me about it in the last week," Boyle said. "I'm getting hundreds of e-mails a week from people interested in what I'm doing."
Boyle, who writes a freeconomy blog, said it would be a community with friendship, fun, music, education, dance and scavenging at its core. Members of his online community are invited to come and stay. His year without money ends on November 29, the day after international Buy Nothing Day. His book, Moneyless man, published by Oneworld Publications, will be released in Ireland and the UK next May.
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"I had to break down my life into categories: where I got my energy and food from, how I transported myself around. I used to take the train or bus but now I use a bike and if I have to transport stuff I get a trailer," said Boyle.
A woman who read his online notice looking for accommodation donated a caravan. "It was in perfect condition but it was over 10 years old and apparently they don't take old caravans on caravan parks and she was paying £25 a week to keep it in storage," he said.
The vehicle has solar panels that power his laptop and he has a phone that only receives calls. He uses a compost toilet, which also provides him with fertiliser. He gets his food by foraging, bartering his skills, finding waste items and growing his own. He regularly eats from bins and says that people are far too cautious about their food. "I haven't been ill all year and I eat a lot of waste food. We're far too precious about what we eat and that's why our immune systems are so weak. I haven't even had a cold," he said.
Last Wednesday, his breakfast was porridge made from oats he secured in exchange for work at a local co-operative. He had a snack of apples grown where he lives, and for lunch he had bread that a shop was throwing out and margarine found in a skip. Dinner was vegetables grown in his garden.
Boyle said that he was brought up in Ballyshannon - his father is a retired handyman and his mother used to work for a construction company - living what most people would call a normal lifestyle.
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"At the start my parents thought I was a bit mad but they're really behind it now. They can see the logic," he said.
"They're thinking of doing something similar. They've both become vegetarians and they're cutting down on their consumption."
Boyle credits his change in direction to a DVD about Gandhi that he watched while studying for a degree in business and economics at NUI Galway. "It was Gandhi who turned my life from going into corporate work to going into the organic food industry," he said.
"I was five years in the organic food industry when I had a eureka moment. I realised that the same issue was at the root of environmental problems and sweatshops. It was our disconnection from the things that we consume."